Jailhouse Rock

The hot-tempered young "Vince" (Elvis Presley) finds himself caught up in a bar-room brawl that has tragic results and sees him sent to jail. There, he is luckily placed with "Hunk" (Mickey Shaughnessy) who is the prison grifter with a penchant for the odd ballad on his guitar. It's the guitar that provides the conduit for the increasingly popular "Vince" and when he's released, he hooks up with the well-connected - and pretty tolerant "Peggy" (Judy Tyler) who manages to get him a recording contract that offers him wealth and stardom. Thing is, he soon finds that's not all it is cracked up to be and his newfound fame might not be enough to compensate for the relationships he's throwing under the bus. Elvis is really just going through the motions here, as is the really quite wooden Tyler and the story is little more than a weakly processional vehicle for the star that mixes a sluggishly developed romance with the eponymous song, along with a couple of other Lieber and Stoller numbers - "Treat Me Nice" and "You're So Square". It does take a swipe at the fickleness and duplicity of the record business but there's not much else to it, and it's quite a long wait til the songs breathe a bit of overly staged life into things.